Silverado, p.14
Silverado, page 14
“I’ll throw in a saddle for five bucks unless you’re toting one.”
“No,” Ray said. “Let’s have a look at it.”
“Out back,” the man said, nodding his head. “Have your look-see.”
Ray slapped the roan on the flank and stepped out of the dark, horse smelling barn into the bright sunlight. He was met by a fist which took him from his feet.
The fist landed flush on his jaw and Ray went down hard, his head spinning. He managed to roll aside just as a boot swung at his head, and he caught it, swinging it upward as he came to his knees.
There were three of them and the ugly club in the thin man’s hand showed they meant business.
“Take him!” their leader, a dark-haired man in a red silk shirt shouted angrily. Yet Ray wasn’t out of it yet. From his crouching position he leaped at the red silk shirt, butting the attacker in the belly.
He grunted and rolled back, clutching his stomach, fighting for breath. A club whizzed past Featherskill’s ear, landing heavily on the collarbone. Ray winced with pain but managed to jab out with a left which took the thug square on the nose, splitting it, showering Ray with blood.
He tried to step back, to gain room to fight, but they had him pinned against the stable wall. He knew by the absence of the familiar weight that his holster was empty. They stepped toward him, the man with the split nose thwacking his heavy club against his palm as he circled warily.
“You’re going to be sorry you took this job, cowboy,” the man in the silk shirt said. Then he lunged and Ray managed to grab the incoming man’s shirt, tugging him down as he brought his knee up hard.
He felt the club thud against his ribs, then again strike his shoulder. The stable yard swam with lights. Ray’s shirt was torn open, sweat trickled into his eyes. He was cornered, and he knew it.
“I’ll kill you for this,” the man with the club muttered. He had a crooked mouth and jug ears. The blood still flowed freely from his broken nose.
One of them went for Ray’s knees, taking him to the ground. He managed to hook twice to this attacker’s ear, but the club caught him at the base of the skull and he sprawled face down in the yellow dust.
“You’ve bought it,” red shirt said softly, viciously, swinging a boot at Ray’s skull.
Featherskill felt his head explode, a loud humming filled his ears. He rolled over, took another kick to the ribs and managed to get to hands and knees. Yet he could not rise and again he was knocked flat.
“That’s enough!”
Featherskill heard the new voice, yet through the perspiration, the fog of pain, he could not be sure of what he was seeing.
“I said that’s enough, Rafer Jacklin!”
Ray blinked and came to his knees, weaving as he fought for breath. She stood there pretty as any saving angel, a twin-barreled express gun in her hands.
“Are you all right, Mr…?”
“Featherskill,” Ray staggered to his feet, sweeping back his hair. His pantleg was torn open and there was a stabbing pain in his side. Deliberately he walked to where his Colt lay in the dust and holstered it. His hat was crumpled, dusty, but he managed to form it some.
Then, still holding his side he walked to the man in the red shirt, the one called Rafer Jacklin, and with the full force of his shoulder he back-handed him across the mouth, splitting a lip.
“I don’t ever want to see you again, mister,” Ray warned him. “Any of you. You had no call to do this—but I’ll have a good enough reason if I catch any of you boys on my trail.”
“We’ll be seeing you again,” Jacklin sputtered. “You best keep your eyes open.”
The stable man had come to the back door, puzzled, eyes wide. “Miss Talleyrand!”
“Just a minute, Ruben. I’m not quite through here. Rafer Jacklin, I’ll repeat what Mr. Featherskill here said,” the young woman said, the express gun punctuating her words, “you come around again—anywhere near—and it’s war with me as well.”
She paused, took a deep breath and tossed her pretty blonde head. “Now get!” she said and she eared back the hammers on the shotgun.
Jacklin and his cronies nearly trampled each other trying to get out of that stable yard. Whatever else the woman was, apparently she had a reputation for meaning business.
The stableman stood scratching his head. “I’ll be—did you see the saddle?” he asked Ray.
“Not yet,” Featherskill answered with a faint, painful smile.
“Did you buy a horse?” Miss Talleyrand asked Ray, tucking the shotgun under her arm.
“Yes, ma’am, but—”
“Good. You can tie it behind my wagon.”
“Ma’am?” Ray shook his fuzzy head. He knew he was a bit battered up, but he couldn’t make sense of this. “I appreciate what you did, Miss.”
“I’d do the same for any man who works for me. When you hire on, we stick with the brand.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” Ray leaned heavily against the fence rail, still trying to clear his head. His side was filled with jagged pain. “I’m sorry, but I…”
Then he just toppled over, lying there in the dust. The pretty blonde woman bent over Featherskill, touched a hand to his forehead and then gripped his wrist, feeling the pulse.
“He’ll be all right, Ruben,” she told the stable man. “If you’ll help me put him in the back of my wagon, we’ll just tie his horse onto the back and I’ll be on my way home.”
“Ma’am…” the stable man began, but Sally Talleyrand had made up her mind and there was no sense trying to talk to her. “Yes, Ma’am,” he agreed, taking Ray’s shoulders.
They tossed the saddle into the wagon bed and propped Ray up on it, tying the roan on behind. Then with a pert nod and a wave, Sally Talleyrand swung the team around and drove off up Front Street, leaving the stable man watching after her.
“Look.” Jacklin, still holding a cloth to his lip, nudged the older man in the gray suit standing beside him. “There she goes. And she’s got the cowboy with her.”
Sam Duggan sucked thoughtfully on his cold cigar, hand in his trouser pocket. He liked none of this. “She’ll have to be taught the hard way, looks like.”
“She’s got sand,” Rafer Jacklin had to admit grudgingly, “but she’s gone too far. This Featherskill—” he glanced at Big Sam Duggan. “I want him bad, Mr. Duggan. Bad.”
“You’ll have him,” Duggan said quietly, with what could almost pass for a smile. “Don’t you worry about that—you’ll have him, Jacklin.”
The sun was high in the sky. It hurt Ray’s eyes to open them. The ship swayed under him. No, it wasn’t the ship, it was a wagon, a rough rut told him.
Then what had happened? He peered once more into the brilliant light of day. He had been on the ship, following Blackschuster…
It came to him suddenly. The fight. The girl.
Painfully he turned his head. There she sat, driving the buckboard along, her back straight, dressed in gingham. The sunlight sparkled in her yellow hair, turning it golden.
“Ma’am…?”
She turned and smiled at him, a lovely, full-mouthed smile. Ray stretched out a hand, his eyes questioning, then again the lights went out for a time and he dreamed he was on a black schooner sailed by a crew of golden-haired women.
When he came around again it was sundown. He could see the orange on the high, sheer clouds through the crack in the rough plank door.
A lanky man who appeared to be Indian, or part, sat playing solitaire at a table. When he saw Ray’s eyes open he folded the cards and walked out the door.
Ray swung his legs around, putting his feet to the bunkhouse floor. The door opened and the Indian re-entered, followed by the girl.
“So, you’re awake!” She had a tray in her hands, some soup, it appeared, and some sliced bread.
“Yes, miss, I’m awake. But just where am I?”
“Where are you?” she said, cocking her head curiously as she put the tray down. “Why on the Double T, in the bunkhouse.” She had her hands on her hips. The Indian had flopped down on a bunk. “Where did you expect to find yourself, Mr. Featherskill?”
“Most anyplace else, I guess, Miss.”
“Most any place. I brought you out here,” she said.
“That much I know,” Ray replied. He tried to get to his feet, but his head protested. “And that’s all I do know.”
“That’s all?” She was genuinely puzzled and now a little worried, Ray thought. “Wait a minute now, let’s hold up a minute!”
“I think that might be a fine idea.”
“You came up from San Francisco.”
“Yes.”
“In answer to the advertisement I placed in the newspaper.”
“No, Ma’am.”
Her face fell and she wrung her hands. She forced a smile then. “I seem to have made an error.”
“Seems like. I’m sorry. If you were expecting someone else.”
“I was expecting…have been.”
Then she sagged down in the hard wooden chair of that bunkhouse and gave in to some tears which must have been ready to come for a long while. When she was through she dabbed at her eyes with her apron and stood unsteadily, her nose red, mouth turned down.
“I apologize,” she sniffed, “for having made the mistake, for having brought you out here for the beating.”
“That was none of your blame, Ma’am.”
“It was,” she said, shaking her head. “The worst of it is that you’re not the first. And I expect I have been the cause of several deaths already.”
A horse nickered outside and the Indian, glancing at Sally Talleyrand, picked up a Henry repeater and slipped into the shadows.
“Please eat, Mr. Featherskill. I’m afraid the soup is cold by now.”
Ray managed to sit up to the table and silently he ate while the girl sat twisting her handkerchief.
“What’s all this about?” he asked finally. “I see you’ve got some trouble.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to involve you, Mr. Featherskill.”
“It’s Ray. And I appear to be some involved anyway.”
Sally smiled at the. blond cowboy and took a deep breath.
“My father came into this country before there was a Bear Harbor,” she began, “and started a cattle ranch back in these high valleys. Brought a bull around the Horn, he did. It was too seasick to help for two months.” She laughed again, then sniffed. “Since Dad died things haven’t gone well. Most of the hands we once had drifted or got on in years—you know a working cowboy ages quickly.”
Ray nodded. It was brutal work. Thirty could be old for a cowboy spending days in the dust and sun, nights in the rain and cold wrestling thousand pound steers and balky ponies.
“Luckily we’ve always had a good relationship with the Indians here. Coos Indians, they are, a friendly, peaceful people, and a few of them work for us. Dad spared beef for them one hard winter, and they’ve never forgotten. Yet with the Coos—” she hesitated and seemed to change her mind about something. “They have their hunting to think about this time of the year.”
“So you advertised in California for some cowhands.”
“Yes. There’s no one around Bear Harbor. The men are mostly fishermen. But I understand there are some fine cowhands in California—these vaqueros, as they call them. And there must be men from all over who went to the gold fields and found they were too late, men who had worked cattle in Texas or Kansas.”
“How many men have answered your advertisement, Sally?”
“None. Not a single man has arrived. Until today. Well, I thought you were the first. Something is going on!” she said with bitter exasperation.
“That Rafer Jacklin and his gang. They attacked you because they thought you were coming here to work,” she insisted, “and I’ll bet you’re not the first. There’s some poor drifter floating in the sea because of them, because of me,” she added sadly.
The door to the bunkhouse opened and the Indian walked in, shaking his head. “Just a bobcat, Miss Talleyrand. It’s quiet out there.” The man put his rifle back in the corner and stood looking at Featherskill.
“Well,” he asked Sally, “did you tell him about the Thing?”
CHAPTER 3
The Thing had the man said?
Ray sat looking from Sally to the Indian who was expressionless.
“The Thing?” Ray asked.
“It’s nothing,” Sally said, brushing it aside. “An Indian legend. Mr. Featherskill won’t be working for me, Pita. There’s no point in going into all the local legends and lore.”
“Whatever you say,” Pita shrugged. The Indian lay back on the bunk, hat tipped over his lean face. “John Brown Bear quit today,” he added from under his hat.
“Not another man!”
“He told me he wanted to hunt for winter provisions for his family,” Pita said. “But some of the men told me he saw tracks and heard a noise.”
“All right. So, he’s gone. I’m sorry, Ray, none of this is your problem.”
“No, but it’s interesting.” Ray frowned, “Is this Thing of yours part of the reason you’re losing Indian riders?”
“Yes—there’s an old tale involved, and there’s been some signs they don’t understand.”
“Plenty sign,” Pita said. “Plenty bad sign.”
Ray was puzzled, but he felt sure it was only a tactic of someone who wanted Sally to lose her men. He mentioned it to her.
“Yes, I think you’re right. Jacklin, whoever is behind him. They want to scare my riders off. But the Coos don’t believe it, do they Pita?”
“No. They want no part of the Thing. They think it is Oh-na-Tami. Big creature with great strength, as the legends say.”
“And you?” Featherskill asked.
Pita lifted his hat and shrugged. “I have been around whites too long. I think maybe Jacklin, someone else. But,” he smiled, “I do not ride alone at night.”
“I still do,” Ray said. “I have no choice. And it is tonight I should be riding. There’s a man I have to find.”
He stood from the table, walking stiffly back to the bunk. His side had tightened up and his head still rang. Simply trying to pull his boots on was an undertaking. His side tore open and he felt the blood seeping into his shirt.
He managed to get his left boot on, but his face was raining perspiration, his side felt as if it were filled with broken glass. Glancing up, the right boot in his hand, he saw Sally and Pita studying him.
“I’ve really got to ride,” Ray said.
“Maybe you make the front gate, huh?” Pita said, leaning back once more. “You call me when you get that other boot on and I’ll help you. You’ll never lift a saddle.”
“You must want this man awfully bad,” Sally commented.
“Yes. Bad.” Ray was nearly trembling from the exertion of putting his boots on. It was obvious to them all that he was going nowhere, not tonight at least. Giving in finally, Featherskill sagged back, and with his boots still on he fell off to a pain-erasing sleep.
The silver-haired man rested in the lobby of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. His delicate hands were folded on top of a newspaper on his lap. On his right hand an emerald ring sparkled deeply.
He had been a tall man in his youth, and for all of his aristocratic appearance, there were the scars of a working man to be discovered under his gray suit.
He had a straight, nearly aquiline nose, and the eyes which were now closed in rest were gray, piercing. Boots clattered across the marble floor of the Palace and Dr. Spectros came suddenly awake.
It was Inkada, waving a letter.
“What is it?”
“Ray,” Inkada said, still breathing heavily from the steep climb up the hill from the docks. “He’s found the man. He’s in a place called Bear Harbor, Oregon Territory.”
The dark man sat down beside the doctor as he scanned the letter patiently. “He seems sure,” Spectros said.
“Quite sure,” Inkada agreed.
Spectros glanced at the letter once again, then carefully folded it and put it away. He looked at the angular, dark man sitting beside him, a man who always looked slightly out of place in his Western dress. A turban suited Inkada better.
“Find Montak,” Spectros said abruptly. “I believe he’s at breakfast.”
“We’ll be leaving?” Inkada asked.
“We’ll be leaving.”
The hotel clerk’s head bobbed up as the tall, dark man strode toward the restaurant. They were an odd group, these three. The old man, the Indian—if that was what he was, although he was taller than most Indians and had a slightly hooked nose, a darker complexion—and the other one! The clerk shuddered. The mute was amiable enough, always smiling. Yet the size of the man was enough to cause you to take half a step back involuntarily.
They were a strange outfit. The old man had not been out of the hotel, nor had the giant. The dark one had arrived only the day before, trail dusty and dead tired.
Whatever their business was, they kept it to themselves. The clerk decided that he preferred it that way.
Inkada pushed through the deeply varnished hotel restaurant door, and immediately spotted the shoulders and head of Montak across the room.
“We’re leaving,” he told the giant.
Montak glanced up and nodded, understanding that something was up. He stood reluctantly, wistfully studying the rest of the French bread and butter, the greens, corn on the cob and barbecued ribs.
“That was breakfast?” Inkada asked incredulously.
Montak’s gentle face broke into a grin and he stood, at the last moment reaching back for a handful of beef rib bones which he rolled up in a napkin.
While Inkada settled the bill and packed the doctor’s trunk, Montak went to the livery and began harnessing the four matched bays to the tall black wagon.
“You’re leavin’ now?” the sleepy-eyed stable hand asked. Montak nodded and continued working the harnesses, his thick, agile fingers slipping the buckles and ties with practiced skill.
“I guess you’ll be takin’ the other horses too.”
